Group items tagged

"People tend to conform their factual beliefs to ones that are consistent with their cultural outlook, their world view," Braman says. The Cultural Cognition Project has conducted several experiments to back that up. Participants in these experiments are asked to describe their cultural beliefs. Some embrace new technology, authority and free enterprise. They are labeled the "individualistic" group. Others are suspicious of authority or of commerce and industry. Braman calls them "communitarians." In one experiment, Braman queried these subjects about something unfamiliar to them: nanotechnology — new research into tiny, molecule-sized objects that could lead to novel products. "These two groups start to polarize as soon as you start to describe some of the potential benefits and harms," Braman says. The individualists tended to like nanotechnology. The communitarians generally viewed it as dangerous. Both groups made their decisions based on the same information. "It doesn't matter whether you show them negative or positive information, they reject the information that is contrary to what they would like to believe, and they glom onto the positive information," Braman says.

"Basically the reason that people react in a close-minded way to information is that the implications of it threaten their values," says Dan Kahan, a law professor at Yale University and a member of The Cultural Cognition Project. Kahan says people test new information against their preexisting view of how the world should work. "If the implication, the outcome, can affirm your values, you think about it in a much more open-minded way," he says. And if the information doesn't, you tend to reject it. In another experiment, people read a United Nations study about the dangers of global warming. Then the researchers told the participants that the solution to global warming is to regulate industrial pollution. Many in the individualistic group then rejected the climate science. But when more nuclear power was offered as the solution, says Braman, "they said, you know, it turns out global warming is a serious problem."And for the communitarians, climate danger seemed less serious if the only solution was more nuclear power.

The study authors, led by Rachel Manber, PhD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, said they hope the results will raise awareness of the problem of depression during pregnancy and provide patients and physicians an alternative to antidepressants. "This standardized acupuncture protocol could be a viable treatment option for depression during pregnancy," they wrote in a paper that will appear in the March issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology. Up to 14 percent of pregnant women may have major depressive disorder, a condition characterized by feelings of dread, gloom and hopelessness, and a loss of interest in normally pleasurable activities. Some women suffer from depression before becoming pregnant, stop taking their medication and then experience a relapse; in other women, pregnancy itself may cause depression.

For this study, the researchers recruited 150 women whose pregnancies were between 12 and 30 weeks gestation and who met the criteria for major depressive disorder. The women were randomized to receive one of three treatments: acupuncture specific for depression; control acupuncture, during which needles were inserted in points not known to help alleviate depressive symptoms; or massage. All of the women received eight weeks of therapy and were assessed for depression at the four- and eight-week marks by an interviewer who was unaware of the treatment each woman received. The researchers found that women who received the depression-specific acupuncture experienced a bigger reduction in depression symptoms than the women in the other groups. The response rate — defined as having a 50 percent or greater reduction in symptoms — was 63 percent for the women receiving depression-specific acupuncture, compared with 44 percent for the women in the other two treatment groups combined. The researchers weren't surprised by what they found — a pilot study yielded similar results, and other studies have shown acupuncture is an effective treatment for depression in the general public — but they were pleased with the results. "I don't think that one-size-fits-all treatments are appropriate for everyone, but acupuncture should be considered as an option," said Lyell. "I hope that people will respect the rigorous methodology used in this blinded, randomized, controlled trial and accept the result: Traditional acupuncture was associated with a significant improvement in depression."

The North American Spine Society and the Society of Interventional Radiology have pointed to flaws in both studies. And earlier studies, published over 15 years, found major benefits to kyphoplasty and a related procedure called vertebroplasty. "We're missing opportunities for patients to receive a safe and effective treatment that can significantly reduce their pain and disability," said Malamis, an interventional radiologist. The procedures are used to treat vertebral compression fractures in patients with osteoporosis and other conditions that result in brittle bones. In a vertebroplasty, an acrylic cement is injected into a fractured vertebra. In a kyphoplasty, a balloon-tipped catheter first is inserted into the fracture. The balloon is inflated to restore the height and shape of the vertebra before the cement is injected. Neva Nelson, 74, of Naperville, Ill., said a kyphoplasty that Malamis performed in October, 2009, has greatly reduced her pain in a vertebra in her lower back that she fractured after falling on ice. Before her kyphoplasty, Nelson had to sit on cushions. Walking, and especially standing, were painful. "I had to do something," she said. "I could not go on like that." Nelson said that since undergoing her kyphoplasty, "I don't have to worry about my back any more." In the controversial studies, patients were randomly assigned to receive a vertebroplasty or a placebo-like "sham" procedure. In the sham procedure, patients received an injection of anesthetic, but no cement. However, patients in severe pain are reluctant to enroll in a trial where there's a 50 percent chance of receiving a sham treatment. In one of the studies, researchers had to screen 1,813 patients to enroll just 131 subjects. In the other study, only 78 of 219 eligible patients were enrolled. This low enrollment rate raises the possibility that the patients who did enroll were not representative. Patients experience the greatest pain during the first three months after a compression fracture. Thereafter, pain gradually subsides. Thus, a vertebroplasty or kyphoplasty provides the greatest benefit when performed within a week or two of the fracture. But the studies enrolled patients up to 12 months after fractures. In addition to reducing pain and disability, a kyphoplasty can reduce the risk of subsequent fractures by improving the angle and height of the spine. The studies evaluated vertebroplasty alone, and did not include the more innovative and very different kyphoplasty procedure. Malamis suggests the medical community wait for the results of additional studies now underway before passing final judgment on vertebroplasty or kyphoplasty. In the mean time, he notes that Medicare still covers the procedures.

The site that yielded the snake — dubbed Sanajeh indicus, or "ancient-gaped one from India" — was located near a village in Gujarat in western India. It was a rich nesting ground for sauropods known as titanosaurs, with evidence for hundreds of egg clutches, each containing about six to 12 round, spherical eggs. Two other instances of fossil snakes found with these clutches suggest the newly described serpent species made its living plundering nests for young dinosaurs. "It would have been a smorgasbord," said researcher Jason Head, a paleontologist at the University of Toronto at Mississauga. "Hundreds or thousands of defenseless baby sauropods could have supported an ecosystem of predators during the hatching season." The dinosaur eggs likely were laid along the sandy banks of a small, quiet tributary and covered afterward by the mother with a thin layer of sediment. These dinosaurs did not seem to look after their young — no evidence for adults has been found at the site. The fact the bones and delicate structures, such as eggshells and the snake's skull, are arranged in anatomical order (as they would appear in real life) points to quick entombment of a serpent caught in the act, as opposed to them all getting washed together after they died. "Burial was rapid and deep," said researcher Shanan Peters, a geologist at the University of Wisconsin. "Probably a pulse of slushy sand and mud released during a storm."

The team observed viruses as they evolved over hundreds of generations to infect bacteria. They found that when the bacteria could evolve defences, the viruses evolved at a quicker rate and generated greater diversity, compared to situations where the bacteria were unable to adapt to the viral infection. The study shows, for the first time, that the American evolutionary biologist Leigh Van Valen was correct in his 'Red Queen Hypothesis'. The theory, first put forward in the 1970s, was named after a passage in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass in which the Red Queen tells Alice, 'It takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place'. This suggested that species were in a constant race for survival and have to continue to evolve new ways of defending themselves throughout time. Dr Steve Paterson, from the University's School of Biosciences, explains: "Historically, it was assumed that most evolution was driven by a need to adapt to the environment or habitat. The Red Queen Hypothesis challenged this by pointing out that actually most natural selection will arise from co-evolutionary interactions with other species, not from interactions with the environment. "This suggested that evolutionary change was created by 'tit-for-tat' adaptations by species in constant combat. This theory is widely accepted in the science community, but this is the first time we have been able to show evidence of it in an experiment with living things." Dr Michael Brockhurst said: "We used fast-evolving viruses so that we could observe hundreds of generations of evolution. We found that for every viral strategy of attack, the bacteria would adapt to defend itself, which triggered an endless cycle of co-evolutionary change. We compared this with evolution against a fixed target, by disabling the bacteria's ability to adapt to the virus. "These experiments showed us that co-evolutionary interactions between species result in more genetically diverse populations, compared to instances where the host was not able to adapt to the parasite. The virus was also able to evolve twice as quickly when the bacteria were allowed to evolve alongside it."